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Making A Difference – Thoughts, Observations and Opinions
This is Dave Brock’s Blog.
It offers my views on a variety of business, sales, marketing, and leadership topic. My goal is to make a difference for you, the reader, in both your professional and personal lives.
Latest Posts
How Are You Building Organizational Capacity And Capability?
Talk to any sales manager or executive about their priorities and you’ll get this universal answer, “Make the numbers!” Without a doubt, every sales leader has to produce results, we’re measured on it, we’re compensated on it, we get to keep our jobs based on our ability to do this–quarter after quarter, year after year. But when I ask managers and executives, what are the most critical things you need to focus on to make the numbers? That’s where there are huge differences in responses. With some, it’s all about deals. Watching them is typically seeing a frenzy of activity, […]
The Intersection Of Seth Godin And Challenger And Insight Driven Sales
For some time, I’ve had the famous Jack Nicholson/Tom Cruise scene in “A Few Good Men” playing in my mind when I think of delivering Insight to customers. You know the scene I’m talking about, it’s where Tom Cruise is cross examining Jack Nicholson as Col. Nathan Jesup and Nicholson delivers his soliloquy, “You can’t handle the truth!” I tend to think, as well intended we may be, however eloquently we may express it, however personalized our insight might be, many customers just can’t handle the truth—or they aren’t yet Insight Ready. That is they aren’t at a point where […]
Don’t Focus On Sales Velocity, Focus On Buying Velocity!
We spend a lot of time seeking to increase pipeline velocity, compressing sales cycles, and focusing on sales velocity. We are constantly driven to move faster. Sometimes in moving faster, we pass our customer and where they are in their own buying journey. This is where so much of our problem with getting customers buy comes in. In our quest for increasing sales velocity (or sales acceleration) we become separated from our customers. We and they are in different places–as a result we become ineffective. All of a sudden, we focus on the solution, our customers aren’t there yet. They see us […]
Customer “Decision-Making Readiness” As A Qualifier
We’ve all read the data about increases in “No Decision Made.” In the new, The Challenger Customer, the authors provide compelling data about the 5.4—the average of 5.4 people involved in complex B2B decisions. It turns out from this and other research, the biggest challenge has little to do with vendor selection, but more to do with the customer ability to align disparate goals, priorities, agendas, perceptions of the problem, and so forth. If we can’t do something to facilitate the ability of the customer to reach consensus, the likelihood of their making a decision, or of us getting a […]
Who Should We Be Talking To?
Hopefully, there is an enterprising entrepreneur who will read this post and do something about a challenge I have–I think virtually all of us have. It’s the issue of “Who should I be talking to?” No, I don’t mean in a deal cycle–we’re always concerned with are we talking to the right people, the decision-maker, influencers, recommenders, and so forth. It’s people in my network, people I may not have spoken to in some time, but that I should reach out to because something has happened that may be relevant to our relationship or something I might be able to […]
“Herding Customers” Through Complex Buying Processes
I’m the proud “parent” of two cats, Sammy and Harley. As with most cats, they are fiercely independent, tending to do what they want to do, rather than what my wife and I may want them to do. (To long time followers, you’ll recognize them, I’ve written about them before.) While I haven’t done a rigorous analysis, I suspect we are successful getting them to do “sort of” what we wanted them to do around 40% of the time. Usually, it involves some sort of bribe with food or a treat, but even then, one (usually Harley) will sniff the […]